The school year that convinced Yadira Milward that education was going to be her life’s work was one that would have sent lesser individuals running for the hills. 

The Cathedral City High School graduate is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her parents encouraged her to pursue her dream and earn a college education. She then graduated from UC San Diego with a degree in human biology. Having worked with local youth during summer vacations, she took a job as an AVID coach (Advancement Via Individual Determination) and worked with students who had similar backgrounds to hers. She helped them in small tutoring circles. After that experience, she was convinced to take the substitute teaching test. She passed. “And I got a long-term subbing position at one of the toughest schools in our districts,” she says.

That school was Painted Hills Middle School in Desert Hot Springs. The school didn’t worry her as much as the subject matter. The science student was put in charge of a language arts class. The regular teacher had been absent for a while and Milward was disappointed to find the classroom void of any human touch. “It just didn’t feel like a welcoming environment,” she says. “I put myself in the shoes of the kiddos and thought, ‘Is this going to be a space where I want to learn?’”

She decorated the room and began putting the kids’ work on the walls. She began to build relationships with the kids. “I knew this was something that I was going to do because I just fell in love with it,” she says. “The kids completely turned around and did super great in class. They asked me, ‘Where are you from? What did you do when you were our age?’ I was just open and shared with them … and treated them as humans and with respect. And I was at that school for four years.”

After Painted Hills, Milward went to Nellie Kaufman Middle School and worked with the English Learners program. She then decided to go to Brandman University in Palm Desert and get a master’s degree in education. Though she finished her degree three years ago (just before the pandemic struck), she still needed to go through the long process of taking exams before she was granted her teaching credentials last year. She credits her reflective coaches (veteran teachers who show new teachers the ropes), Megan Fry and Alexis Acker, for helping her. When Milward was done with school and exams, she was hired by the Palm Springs Unified School District. Her first assignment was Desert Hot Springs High School. “I’ll never forget my first class – having my own science lab and going through the trials and tribulations of being a first-year teacher,” she says. 

Her longtime mentor – Guillermo Chavez, the principal at Cathedral City High School – advised her that a science position might be opening at the school. When it did, she landed it. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a dream to get [to teach] at the school I graduated from and to work with kids who are going to see themselves in me,’” she says.

Though teaching science remotely during the pandemic was challenging, it prepared Milward for the new unique assignment that Chavez handed her this year: Multi-tiered Systems of Support Coach. Educators recognized that kids coming back from the pandemic “were going to need more than curriculum support,” Milward says. “The kids had some real trauma and they needed so much more social and emotional support than you can give in the classroom.” As part of her new position, she’s in charge of a group of students called equity ambassadors. Their job is to serve as peer counselors for their fellow students and resolve conflicts and disagreements. 

“One really cool thing is I have to be creative because there is no curriculum that exists for this,” Milward says.    

Another cool thing was that Principal Chavez nominated Milward for the Amazing Teacher Award, a partnership program between Gannett Publishing and school districts around the country. Nominees are asked to answer a number of written questions. Milward was up against a thousand other teachers for the $5,000 grand prize. 

On a Friday in late January of this year, Milward ushered a group of students out of her classroom (Club CC) before lunch. A little while later, a number of students wandered in, then Principal Chavez, then the superintendent. More and more people filled the room. Milward didn’t understand what was going on until Spencer Keane of LocaliQ (and assistant baseball coach at Palm Springs High School) announced that Milward was the winner of the Amazing Teacher Award.

“I said, ‘Give me a minute,’” she says. “‘I’m going to need to sit down.’ Being recognized for doing something you love, something that doesn’t even feel like work, feels so good. I think my greatest dream has always been to empower youth, to inspire them to do what it is that they want to do.”